COLQUHOUN, Patrick.
A Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis; containing a detail of the various crimes and misdemeanors by which Public and Private Property are, at present, injured and endangered: and suggesting remedies for their prevention.
London, H. Baldwin and Son, 1800.
This work provides a summary of the criminal offences which were commonplace in London in the late-eighteenth century, with suggestions as to remedy the situation. It was written by Patrick Colquhoun and first issued in 1798. Theft and other crimes were problematic for merchants and shopkeepers in London throughout the eighteenth century. Without an organised police force, crime was able to flourish in the city and vast sums of money were lost each year. Colquhoun and his associates, with support from the philosopher Jeremy Bentham, established a private 'river police' to combat these problems. The success of the force persuaded the government to pass an act which made it a public organisation in 1800, one of the first such police forces to be established and which predated Robert Peel's police force by almost 30 years. The sixth edition is one of the most detailed editions of the work.
The work contains somewhat antisemitic claims in its chapter XI, discussing the Origins of Crime (pp. 319-321, which also sheds light on the relationships between the different Jewish communities of London at the time):
'Another Cause, and no inconsiderable one, of the progress and increase of the progress and increase of crimes may be developed, by contemplating the deplorable state and condition of the lower order of the Jews in the Metropolis, who are of the society of the Dutch Synagogue. Totally without education, and very seldom trained to any trade or occupation by which they can earn their livelihood by manual labour: their youths excluded from becoming apprentices, and their females from hiring themselves generally as servants... nothing can exceed their melancholy condition, both with regard to themselves and Society.'
Sixth edition; 8vo (23.3 x 14.4 cm); half-title, title, scattered light foxing, some light marginal finger-soiling, blue ink ownership stamps to preface; publisher's brown quarter morocco over marbled boards, gilt lettering to spine, spine slightly discoloured, corners slightly rubbed, edges uncut; [15], xvi, 655, [31] pp.
Stock code 106901
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A Treatise on the Police of the Metropolis;
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